Thursday, October 21, 2010

Dear family and friends, sorry for the lack of postings in the past few weeks, for Q and I have made a side trip to attend my cousin’s wedding in China. And since we started in South America, the travelling itself was already an epic.

First we bid farewell to Casa and stored our motorcycle travel equipment with the Incredible Two-cumanos Germán y Claudia (more on them later), and started with a 15 hour bus ride from Tucumán in northwestern Argentina to its capital Buenos Aires. Even though the bus ride was long, it was well-serviced, with dinner consisting of a snack, a cold plate of several small salads, and a hot plate of main dish and sides. The fully-inclined sleeper seats also spoiled us for the flights to come.

Our friend Claudia saw us off at the Tucumán bus station.

Us enjoying our dinner on the sleeper bus.

The flight from Buenos Aires to Toronto was about 13 hours including a stopover in Santiago de Chile and a fly-over of a live volcano. I have to say the Chilean Andes looked fantastic and I can’t wait till we get there with Casa. The 9 hours stopover in Toronto passed by quickly thanks to a dimsum brunch with our friends in Toronto (Thanks Cri for making it possible!)

Gorgeous view of Santiago de Chile

Thanks goodness that the 12 hours flight from Toronto to Beijing was rather uneventful, and 3 hours layover later I found myself dreamwalking onto yet another one-hour flight to Jinan, my home city and our final travel destination.

So we travelled for over 100 hours in return for a wedding, which lasted about two hours. However the family gathering made it worth every minute of our travelling. Congrats to my cousin Da and his wife Yi for their lovely wedding – dozens Argentinians have admired your wedding photos!!

Thankfully the return journey was somewhat less painful as we stopped over in Toronto for several days and Buenos Aires for a couple days. (Thanks to TH & Ron y Bas & Saskia for accommodating us!)

To all our dear family and friends: We always think of you and talk about you everywhere we travel. You travel with us.